After four years at Washington University, Raymond Deng is going to spend two years seeing the length and breadth of China.

Deng was recently awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to China to pursue independent work overseas during this year and the next. He is one of 11 University graduates who received the Fulbright Scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year.

The Fulbright Program, instituted in 1948, sends college graduates, graduate students and scholars from the United States to teach or pursue independent projects abroad.

Deng’s work will focus on the disparities between urban and rural public health in China. His project will take him from two of China’s largest cities, Shanghai and Beijing, to the markedly-poorer regions in southern and southwestern China, the Szechuan and Yunnan provinces.

“Right now with the developments going on—you always hear, ‘Oh, there’s so much development and money’ but really all of that’s concentrated on the east rim,” Deng said.

“The development in the rural areas is tremendously lacking—there’s a huge disparity in all facets of life. I want to research a particular rural healthcare scheme that seems to have failed in the 1980s, and why farmers are unwilling to cooperate with it.”

Deng, a biology major, applied to the Fulbright Program in China because of the scholarship’s prestige and the country’s importance on the global stage.

He also saw the scholarship as a crossroads between his academic life and his personal identity as a Chinese-American. The son of Chinese immigrants, Deng views his background as critical to his work in China.

“It’s the country my parents came from,” he said. “But it’s interesting because they left China before its economic reforms, so I’d visit China every year as a kid and think that this nation is moving at such a quick pace in everything. I’d return there with my parents and it’d be completely different for them—it wasn’t the China they left. So it has personal value to me in that way.”

Deng also said his Chinese-American heritage also confers a practical advantage because of his familiarity with Chinese language and culture.

“The Fulbright community really doesn’t want to hold your hands—for better or for worse,” he said, referring to his grasp of Chinese language. “Once you’re in the program, it’s very independent work.”

Because the Fulbright community selects its scholars on the basis of how practically they can implement and complete their projects, being Chinese-American—and appearing Chinese—is also of some help to Deng.

“I hear that the Chinese are very sensitive to how they’re portrayed in Western media, so how a Westerner is doing work there can be hard,” Deng said. “It’s certainly a boon to look Chinese.”

Amy Suelzer, assistant director of international studies, who also oversees undergraduate applicants to the Fulbright Program, noted that the University boasts a high acceptance rate for its applicants.

“Students at Washington University are often in a very good position to apply to the Fulbright,” she said. “Our students are here because they’ve done well. Since applications in 2002 we’ve had a 38 to 45 percent success rate.”

Deng’s work with China’s public health also represents a significant transformation in China’s place in the Fulbright Program, and in turn its rapid economic development on the global level.

“It’s very interesting, because in the past year or so China has significantly increased the number of its Fulbright grants it has chosen to offer,” Suelzer said. “Fulbright grants are by their nature limited to U.S. citizens, which means they’re very interested in bringing researchers of China into the country to give them exposure to what’s happening in China right now. That represents a significant opportunity to students like Raymond, [who] will bring his own experience into the country.”

China’s global importance will influence Deng’s future, as well as those of other Fulbright scholars working in China.

“There’s much potential to do work there in the future,” said Deng. “I certainly know I’m going to return [to China] some time. It’s kind of hard to get away from China these days.”